Medical Health Encyclopedia

In general, limited scleroderma patients experience a long duration of Raynaud's phenomenon before they develop other symptoms, including skin thickening, ulcers in the fingers, or gastrointestinal symptoms. It should be noted that one or more of the CREST conditions can also occur in other forms of scleroderma.

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Diffuse Scleroderma. Diffuse scleroderma, the other systemic sclerosis, has the following characteristics:

• It can affect wide areas of the skin, connective tissue, and other organs.
• It can have a very slow course, but it also may have a rapid onset, which may be marked by swelling of the whole hand. If it progresses rapidly early on it can affect internal organs and becoming very severe, even life threatening.
• Diffuse scleroderma may overlap with other autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus and polymyositis. In such cases, the disorder is referred to as mixed connective disease.

Click the icon to see an image of systemic lupus erythematosus.